peasants died wherever they lay. Though the plague had, for the most part, ceased less than ten years after it started, it killed nearly one third of the European population. In many towns the dead outnumbered the living. Bodies piled in the streets faster than nuns, monks, and relatives could bury them. Many bodies were interred in mass graves, overflowing with dead, or dumped into nearby rivers. Domesticated cats and dogs, along with wolves, dug dead out of shallow graves, and sometimes attacked those still living. Many animals did either from plague or lack of care. Henry Knighton noted more than 5,000 dead sheep in one field alone.
             The death of a very large portion of the work force aided those that were still living. The sheer scarcity of workers enabled the remainder to make demands of higher wages and better conditions. Farms located on poor soil were abandoned because the demand for grain had decreased, enabling fewer farms, located on the better tracts of land to feed the population.
             For a more in-depth look at the effect that plague had on the literature of the time please visit my other page on the bubonic plague. It is a copy of my research paper that I did as a high school senior. I know people will plagarize it, and I really can't stop you. But I do have two requests. First- don't plagarize it and repost it on the internet. Its one thing if you lie to a teacher and say something is yours, its another thing to lie to the whole world about it. Secondly- tell me what grade you got on it... You can find it here.
             There have been a few encounters with bubonic plague in modern times. In the American and Canadian west, from Texas and Oklahoma in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, it is most often transmitted from species of squirrels. The last occurrence of transmissions from rats to people, or people to people in the United States occurred in 1924 in Los Angeles. In that epidemic there were 32 cases of pneumonic ...